The
saddest acre in America:Hooper
mother to share son's story on documentaryabout
Arlington National Cemetery's Section 60Monday,
October 13, 2008By
NANCY VAN VALKENBURGCourtesy
of The Standard-Examiner (Utah)

Just
before he shipped out to Iraq, Army Private Michael
A. Pursel told his mom that if the worst should happen, he wanted his
remains cremated and scattered.

"He
didn't want me to be buried somewhere I could go 'live' by his graveside,"
said Air Force Major Terry Dutcher, the mother of Pursel, who died in an
explosion in Iraq 17 months ago.

Major
Terry Dutcher, of Hooper, mourns in front of her son Michael A. Pursel's
graveat
Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in May 2007.

"Then
the military told me that Michael was entitled to be buried at Arlington
Cemetery and would be placed at the top of the list. I knew that if Michael
and I had discussed Arlington, he would have wanted to be there.

"He
always talked about wanting to be a hero."

Dutcher,
42, has traveled to Arlington, Virginia, three times to visit the grave
of her son in the military cemetery that is the final resting place for
more than 300,000 men and women.

On
one trip, an HBO film crew approached Dutcher. Her interview airs today
as part of the documentary, "Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery."

Section
60, which has been called the saddest acre in America, is the area of the
cemetery that holds the remains of troops who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It's
a peaceful place," Dutcher said of Arlington.

"You
can't experience that through the television or books. It's sacred and
peaceful. It's absolutely gorgeous."

"It's
impeccable and beautiful. I can't come up with enough wordsto describe
it."

"I'm
proud of Michael. I would change what happened to him if there was any
way I could, but with the way things happened, I am honored to have Michael
in Arlington."

Dutcher
has been mother to eight children, including three she bore, three she
adopted after her sister died, and two stepsons. She married Dean Pursel,
Michael's father, when both were serving in the Army.

"We
knew since (Michael) was 2 that he would join the military," said Dutcher,
now married to Jeffrey Dutcher, a retired military man.

"Michael
joined between his 11th- and 12th-grade years. When he picked infantryman
(as his preferred assignment), we knew he would be one of the guys in the
streets.

"We
were concerned about the danger, but his joy at being able to do it overrode
our concerns. He was excited about living his dream."

Dutcher
returned from her own assignment in Iraq in January 2007. She and her son,
by then a Corporal in the U.S. Army, talked by phone whenever they could.

"He
would tell me about how they would walk the streets and go through homes,
and how the Iraqis would give them water and invited them to stay the night,"
Dutcher said.

"The
locals were appreciative. He was even learning to speak Iraqi. He told
me he had earned his combat infrantryman's badge, and he told me not to
worry."

Pursel's
last phone call came on May 6, 2007, a Saturday. The next day, at 1:10
p.m., Jeffrey Dutcher opened the door to an Army official and a military
chaplain.

"They
didn't have to say anything," Terry Dutcher said. "We knew. They had the
document in their hands."

Pursel,
six other soldiers and a Russian journalist had been traveling in a Stryker
combat vehicle when they were hit by an improvised explosive device. All
but the driver had been killed.

Pursel,
who had just turned 19, was dead after serving 18 months.

Mourning
is an ongoing process.

"Some
days are better than others," Dutcher said. "I still have my days. I don't
want to say I have come to accept Michael's death, because I can never
accept it. I can accept that it is real now. It didn't used to feel real."

"I
used to count the days. Every Sunday at 1:10 in the afternoon would be
horrible. After a year, I stopped counting the days and started counting
months."

"I
have more good days now."

Dutcher
said she hopes to visit the grave where her son's ashes are buried twice
a year.

"It's
not like 'living' there," she said, remembering her son's wishes.

"It
sounds strange to say, but Arlington's not really a sad place. Sometimes
we have picnics there, and tell stories. Sometimes we meet other family
members, and find a lot in common."

"When
I was in Iraq, we lost a Major, a man from security forces and another
young man in a helicopter accident. I went to their services in Iraq, but
I never knew where they went home to.

"Major
Gilbert is buried, like, 5 feet from Michael, and the other two are
in Arlington, as well. It's a place that combat buddies go home to. I like
to think they are together, and they are happy now."

There
are restrictions on who can be buried at Arlington.

Among
those allowed are troops killed on active duty, or who die after completing
20 years of service, or who die after being awarded certain specific military
honors.

"People
don't understand what you have to give to get in there," Dutcher said.

"The
requirements are tough. They are heroes. The people buried at Arlington
went above and beyond to help someone else. They gave of themselves for
the safety of others."

On
one trip to Arlington, Dutcher met a stranger who seemed to understand.

"She
was a lady from Germany who spoke very little English, but we managed to
communicate. She e-mailed me later, from Germany, and expressed her thankfulness
for what Michael had done, and for what all the soldiers had done."

"I
can't say for sure if I were in Germany that I would think to go visit
one of their national cemeteries. I'm not sure if most people really understand
the profound nature of the sacrifice these men and women have made."

Most
Americans have never heard of Section 60, let alone visited it. But tonight,
thanks to filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matt O'Neill, you can get a glimpse
of the area in Arlington National Cemetery where the men and women who
have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are buried.

Section
60: Arlington National Cemetery is the third of a trilogy of collaborations
between the filmmakers and HBO that capture the costs of the current wars.
Section 60, in fact, picks up where Baghdad ER left off. The tragic death
from shrapnel wounds of 21-year-old Lance Corporal Robert
T. Mininger comes at the unforgettable end of Baghdad ER. Their latest
documentary opens with a mother visiting the grave of her son "Bobby."
Unlike like the action-packed Baghdad ER or the stylized Alive Day Memories:
Home from Iraq, Section 60 offers an almost unmediated view into the lives
of the men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands
and wives, who, week after week, day after day, find solace, community,
and a place to grieve visiting their lost loved ones in Section 60.

The
Emmy Award-winning directors are based in New York out of DCTV. Yesterday
they were in Washington, D.C., to attend a special TAPS (Tragedy Assistance
Program for Survivors) screening of their film at the Navy Memorial. I
caught up with Alpert and O'Neill over the phone as they got ready for
the screening and talked to me about why Section 60 matters now, how making
this film affected them in a way no other documentary has, and what it's
like feeling "trapped in Section 60."

Matt
O'Neill: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the background noise
in this presidential election. No one is paying attention right now in
the mainstream media to the costs that the military and their families
are paying day in and day out, whether it's the 5,000 lives lost or the
hundreds of thousands who have spent years away from their friends and
families. That's why we're proud to be working with HBO and Sheila Nevins
to make this film. They've consistently brought attention to these issues
when the rest of the media is ignoring them. And it's an important time
right now in the context of the presidential elections. Americans need
to be paying attention to the two wars that we're fighting overseas right
now and the hundreds of thousands of men women who are serving the county
over there. No matter what you think politically, it's essential that when
you walk into the voting booth on November 4th, you remember that the person
you're voting for, whether it's a congressional or the presidential election,
will be deciding whether or not to send men and women to fight wars. We
want the film to be watched by tens of millions of people because that's
the type of attention we want to bring to Section 60. And we told the families,
"Let us into your world because we want people to pay attention to it."
We think Section 60 deserves it.

KH:
Your war-related recent films were very different. Baghdad ER was more
dynamic and action-packed. And Alive Day Memories was much more stylized.
How did this compare to those two experiences?

MO:
The reality in Baghdad ER is very different than the reality in Section
60. In Baghdad, we tried to show what it's like being in an emergency room
in a war zone, with tons of action. It's terrifying...riveting, it reminds
you of the costs of the war in a visceral way. Section 60 had a totally
different energy. We're trying to help the rest of the country enter the
world that these families live in every day. The greatest praise that we
received thus far was at a screening for a number of the families. Paula
Zillinger, is one of the mothers in this film, she's in the first real
scene in the film and she goes to visit her son's grave. Her son, Bobby,
died in the end of Baghdad ER. At the screening she got up and faced the
audience and said, "Welcome to our world." I hope it brings an audience
into the reality that these families are living.

KH:
Was it eerie? Did you feel like you were intruding?

MO:
Approaching these families was one of the most difficult things that I've
ever had to do as a filmmaker because their expressions of grief, their
visits to the graves of their lost loved ones, are the most intimate moments
you could possibly imagine. And we're standing there... waiting... with
a camera. So the way that we operated was as human beings first, documentarians
second. We spent lots of time in the cemetery not filming, talking about
why we were doing what we were doing, how we wanted to capture the cemetery
as experienced on a day-to-day basis. We wanted to capture their love.
And sometimes the first time we spoke to a family they declined to be filmed.
And maybe on the second time we spent a lot of time talking but didn't
film anything and then maybe on the third time or the fourth time they
said, "You know, we would like to be part of this. We would like to be
filmed." And eventually we became part of the fabric of the cemetery. So
many of these families are returning week after week or day after day,
so we became part of their community.

KH:
What was your schedule like?

Jon
Alpert: Basically the schedule was we were in the cemetery from the opening
of the gates to the closing of the gates every single day for almost four
months.

KH:
What kind of toll did that take on you?

JA:
Every American should visit Arlington and visit Section 60. I hope it would
have the same impact that it had on us.... When you stand there and see
the rows and rows of tombstones stretching towards the horizon, you really
realize what the price of war can be - not only these wars but what it
has been for centuries. That really goes deep into your being. Section
60 is such an open wound in the families of the fallen. People say, "You'll
get over it. With time you'll heal." The loss and the sadness of these
families is not healing. That's another thing we hope America will pick
up. Because maybe we're paying a price for the war in the way it's affecting
our economy but it's not something that has an impact... I mean people
could watch a football game on Monday night instead of watching this documentary.
But for these families, their lives have been altered and they will never,
ever, ever be the same.

MO:
I cried a lot in Section 60. I got the sense that a lot of these families
were trapped by their loss and trapped by their love that couldn't be requited
and I felt trapped to a certain extent. Over the course of four months
I became somewhat overwhelmed by the sense of loss and the sense that nobody
is paying attention. The loss is so profound in Section 60, so tangible.
You understand that each of those numbers discussed in the media, whether
they were talking about 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, have left a profound sense
of emptiness, and ripped a hole in the fabric of a community and the fabric
of a family. And when I wasn't there, I wanted to be there, paying respect
and honoring the people who are buried there. Because a large swath of
the country isn't and isn't even aware of it. It's your responsibility
as a citizen, an American, to know what's happening with our service members
overseas. So I became quite depressed at times.

KH:
When you were running around doing Baghdad ER you must have had a lot of
adrenaline. With this film, the grief is unmitigated with no action or
suspense or chaos to distract you. It affected me, a viewer, in a way that
Baghdad ER didn't. How did it affect you as filmmakers differently? And
how did affect the way you filmed it?

MO:
There's very little that distracts these families from their love and their
loss. And when they're in Arlington that's a sacred time that they're spending
with their loved ones. There really isn't anybody else there but the families,
their memories, their efforts to celebrate lives lost too soon and, for
four months in 2007, Jon and I and our cameras. There was a month where
I was filming alone because of certain circumstances and at the end of
that month I was feeling totally crushed. This stuff plays out in slow
motion. When you see the same grief, the same wounds that will never heal,
acted out day after day after day, you realize it's a pain that's never
going to go away. Paula talks about going to a meeting of Gold Star mothers
[who have lost a child in war] where a mother was talking about her son
she lost in Vietnam. And Paula said, "Forty years. I realized that I was
going to feel this loss...I was going to continue to love him for forty
years. It's something that never ends."

In
the film there are no subtitles, no music, no graphics. You're just sort
of placed in the cemetery as we were for four months and you begin to get
a sense of what it might feel like to be trapped in Section 60.

KH:
This film focuses as much if not more on the people who are left behind
as it does on the people who they lose. You as documentary filmmakers often
travel to dangerous places to capture important stories. Did seeing the
way people reacted to the deaths of their loved ones, did being surrounded
by the grief of those left behind make you think about your own loved ones
who would be left behind if something were to happen to you? Did it make
you reconsider the types of projects you'd want to embark on?

MO:
One thing, universally, regardless of their political persuasion or feelings
on the war, that parent after parent, husband after husband and wife after
wife said was, "my loved one died serving the people that he loved and
trying to do some good in the world." I never want to leave any of the
people that I love behind. But I also think it's very important to try
to have a positive effect on the world. I think the positive effect that
we can have as filmmakers is helping other people understand the world
and enter places they couldn't otherwise enter. Not everyone can spend
four months in Section 60. Watching this film and participating in this
film is a way to begin to get a sense of what is going on. There are lots
of places in the world that we as Americans need to understand a heck of
a lot better than we do. I hope this helps inform the American public and
helps us understand other people. The better we understand other people
the more likely we are to all work together to build something useful and
good.

JA:
It compels you to go to the war zones. We've been lobbying to go to Afghanistan
for 3 years. HBO is one of the few places that gives you the resources
to tell these stories. And if we have a choice between going to Afghanistan
and Alabama, we'll go to Afghanistan. I certainly was left wondering what
would happen if I died. What it really made me think about was what I would
feel like if my daughter, who is the same age as these soldiers, died.
And it haunted me because I saw that... it's something that you can never
be prepared for and something that you can never recover from.

KH:
Besides watching the film, what else can people do?

MO:
We have almost 200,000 people serving overseas right now. Write a letter
saying thank you, send a package. Since the draft ended only a small portion
of American society is participating in war directly. And they're participating
in an enormous way. So many families have sent their sons, daughters, brothers,
sisters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers overseas not once, not twice,
not three times, but even four different times. They've done four tours
of duty in some combination in Iraq and Afghanistan years away from families
and friends and loved ones. It's important, no matter what your political
persuasion, to say thank you.

There
are so many families that shared stories with us who are not in the film.
We wish we could have included them. We want the whole world to come to
Section 60.

The
other thing I think about all the time is in Section 60 we've lost 5,000
people. The loss that the Iraqi people have suffered in the last five years
is horrific. The loss the Afghani people have suffered in the last five
years is horrific, and each one of those holes is just as personal and
just as deep as they are in Section 60.
HBO premieres Arlington documentary tonightBy William H.
McMichaelCourtesy of The
Army Times13 October 2008

It
isn’t likely to bring home the sorts of ratings “The Sopranos” scored for
HBO.

So
one must give the cable network kudos for putting the money, time and effort
into producing a documentary with the decidedly noncommercial focus of
the cemetery plot in Arlington, Virginia, where some of the nation’s war
dead are buried, and where their families and friends come to mourn them.

Section
60 is the final resting place for hundreds of troops who died in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Yet the film’s focus is not on the troops themselves, per
se, but on the impact of their deaths on those they left behind.

Those
who knew them best were the honored guests Sunday night at a private premiere
of the hourlong film, held in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Navy Memorial.

Afterward,
a call by one family member for a round of applause for the filmmakers
drew a sustained standing ovation.

The
film, produced by the same team that produced the acclaimed documentary
“Baghdad ER,” eschews voiceovers and melodramatic music, and isn’t judgmental.
Instead, the viewer is essentially the camera, wandering from one mourner
to another — wife, husband, mother, father, sister, brother, child — opening
very private doors in a very public place.

The
camera lingers, although it never stays too long — although some viewers
may take exception.

“I
doubt that it will be particularly popular,” said Mary Neiberger, whose
son, Army Specialist Christopher Neiberger,
was killed in Baghdad on August 5, 2007. Neiberger said the film was well-done
but added, “It’s too close to real ... and I don’t think many people feel
very comfortable or very entertained by that.”

But
the film, although at times an overwhelmingly sad glimpse into the devastating
hole left when death unexpectedly takes a loved one, also underscores how
shared loss can turn a stranger’s shoulder into the comforting embrace
of a friend.

At
one point, for instance, two mourners see a man who’s been sleeping next
to a grave for a couple of hours. Concerned, one woman takes him a bottle
of water, which he gratefully accepts. A man who pines for his fiancée
offers comforting words to a young woman at her husband’s grave.

“It
was very powerful,” said Laura Cowherd, whose brother Leonard,
an Army Second Lieutenant, was killed May 16, 2004 in Karbala, Iraq. “Sort
of what we go through every day. The tears. The emotion. I think they did
a good job.”

Every
day, the film remembers to note, can be every bit if not more difficult
than coping with the graveside visits.

“The
person made a good point of what goes on after the death,” said Kimberly
Hazelgrove, whose husband, Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Brian Hazelgrove,
was killed returning from a combat mission near Mosul nearly five years
ago. “We’re raising young children. We’re working full-time jobs. We’re
trying to live.”

Hazelgrove
and her children, now 5, 7, 14 and 16, make their home in the D.C. area,
although Brian isn’t buried at Arlington but back home in Edinburgh, Indiana,
near his parents. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Joseph
T. McCloud does rest at Arlington, where his wife Maggie said he asked
to be buried “if anything should ever happen.”

“I
love the phrase, ‘Arlington is where valor rests,’” she said. “It is. He’s
surrounded by the best of the best. People that willingly gave their life
for their country. We live here. I like being close by.”

But
her young children, now 4, 7 and 9, do not care to visit the grave of their
father, who died nearly two years ago in a helicopter crash in Anbar province,
she said. “Still too fresh,” she said. “And I respect and honor that.”

In
the film, some kids do come. Children put flowers at a grave. Another colors
as her mother makes a rubbing of her husband’s tombstone. Yet another places
candy canes at the graves and, standing at her father’s, says, “Merry Christmas,
Daddy.”

The
mourners include mothers and fathers, as well.

“Sixteen
killed in Afghanistan,” one father recalled the headline on his computer
screen. His wife, he said, had replied, “You know what that means, right?
It means there’s going to be 16 mothers crying tonight.”

He
added somberly, standing with his wife at their son’s grave, “She did not
know she was gonna be one of them.”

The
film’s unrelenting sadness is leavened by a visitor to Neiberger’s grave.

“Chris
and I are going to share a beer,” says his brother, who plops down on the
grass with two Samuel Adams Oktoberfest beers. “We’ll open a couple, and
he can have one, and I can have one.” He proceeds to take a swig, and pours
the equivalent out of the other bottle onto his brother’s grave, drawing
chuckles from the premiere audience.

But
more often, the camera finds heartbreak. The young woman over her husband’s
grave, mouthing, “I love you.” Another telling a friend, “I wish I could
have one more conversation with him.” Yet another: “Next week would have
been our 20th wedding anniversary.”

“A
lot of graves,” one woman remarks near the film’s end. “And I’m sure there’ll
be a lot more down here before this war’s through.”
HBO goes behind the grieving at Arlington National
Cemetery gravesBy David HinckleyCourtesy Of The
New York Daily News13 October 2008

As
two women stand quietly in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where
soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, one muses that this
has been called "the saddest acre in America."

That's
true, says the other. And it could also be called "the most honorable."

Both
ways, it makes for one of this fall's saddest hours of television.

Paula
Davis at Arlington National Cemetery in the sorrowful HBO documentary 'Section
60.'(Her
Son Is Justin R. Davis)

Filmmakers
Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill have a straightforward mission here. They
took their cameras to Section 60 and filmed people visiting graves. Most
of the people speak a little, trying to explain their ritual or how they
feel.

Not
surprisingly, most of the words only hint at the devastation. When a preschool
girl touches a headstone and says, "My daddy's under here," all you can
hear are echoes of Bob Dylan singing, "The emptiness is endless."

She
just doesn't know that yet.

It's
coming.

The
filmmakers could doubtless have filled their hour with heartbreaking stories,
or just people lost in silent tears.

Wisely,
they don't. One man sits cross-legged before his brother-in-law's stone
and opens two Sam Adams bottles. He takes a few pulls from one, pours out
a few swallows from the other.

"I'd
been looking forward to hanging out with him after he got back," he says.

It's
those moments that remind the viewer there's no half-full in this glass.
What the men and women buried here did won't be forgotten, and the mere
fact that these visitors here have found a way to get through every day
with this loss speaks well of the human spirit.

But
the soldiers buried here are gone from the lives of people who wanted and
needed them alive. There's no way to look at this that's not sad.

At
the same time, Alpert and O'Neill deliberately sidestep overt politics.

They
brush against it briefly when a widow says it upsets her to hear criticism
of the war and President Bush because her husband "died for his country."

Another
woman relates, looking at a tombstone, how her 4-year-old daughter "told
him that if he went into the Army, he'd go off to war and he'd be killed."

That
isn't a little girl talking about Iraq, of course. It's every little girl
talking about every war, just as Section 60 is Flanders Field and every
other silent place where visitors come to stand alone under a black umbrella
in a pouring rain or sometime just lie down for hours.

"Section
60" doesn't make sense of it because there's no sense to be made. It's
about the beginning of the process by which survivors carry on, a process
that has no right or wrong or even rules - just respect for the sacrifice
and the sadness.
By ROGER CATLIN13
October 2008

Among
the rows and rows of gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery is one
quadrant — Section 60 — reserved for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Some
people have called Section 60 the saddest acre in America," says a woman
kneeling before one of the graves in a new documentary about the site.

Much
of "Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery" focuses on weeping wives,
mothers, fathers, brothers, fiances and friends mourning their war dead.

But,
the woman adds, "I would also say it's one of the most honorable places
in America."

In
the documentary that premieres tonight on HBO, mothers and wives place
flowers, stones, pictures and mementos on the graves of loved ones, console
one another and try to explain the deaths to young ones.

Filmmakers
Matthew O'Neill and Jon Alpert, who previously made the award-winning HBO
documentaries "Baghdad ER" and "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq," use
no narration or even music (until the end) other than the taps playing
softly in the background at another funeral or church bells tolling.

Instead,
it concentrates on the people left behind and how they cope with their
losses. Some bring armfuls of flowers, the cellophane wrapping crinkling
in the wind. Others bring their own Windex to clean the white stones. Children
draw pictures to leave for daddy for an approaching holiday.

"We
come as often as we can," explains a young mother with children putting
candy canes on each grave. "We moved here so we could be near him, come
out there for birthdays and anniversaries and all the special events."

Alone
at the stone, she whispers: "Another year without you."

It
can be quiet there. Sometimes you only hear flights in and out of nearby
Reagan National Airport. Or a flock of geese tramping by and honking. But
there are a lot of funerals.

"My
God," a woman says to another at one point. "There's five more rows here,
in just two short years."

There
is some pomp and official bearing in these burials, from caskets drawn
on horse-drawn caissons, to stirring words from military chaplains.

At
a ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of a death, things are less
formal. Loved ones step up one by one to drop a flower on the stone. A
young man holds a boom box playing a country song about a soldier's sacrifice.

But
much of what goes on in Section 60 is deeply personal. One man simply lies
prone at his brother's grave and then returns with a cigar they had meant
to share upon the soldier's return.

Mundane
things happen there, too. A backhoe fills in dirt once the funeral is over.

Leaf
blowers buzz. Power washers hose down the stones. Mylar balloons wriggle
to be free. And as mothers gather in small groups in the rows to make some
sense, a West Hartford mother adds her voice.

"We're
connected to them," says Leesa Phillipon. Her son, Lance Corporal Lawrence
Philippon, a 2001 graduate of Conard High School, was killed in Iraq
on May 8, 2005. That year, it was Mother's Day and his parents' 24th wedding
anniversary.

"There's
that part of the umbilical cord that did not get cut," she says in the
film. "It goes with them wherever they go. And they are with us, I do believe."

In
a commentary piece she wrote for The Hartford Courant in 2006, Philippon
said her son took the family to Arlington when they visited him stationed
at the Marine Barracks in Washington. "He said that day if anything happened
to him, he wanted to be buried there."

In
the film, she tells another mourner, "One of the Gold Star meetings I go
to, one of the mothers from Vietnam, she looked at me and she said, 'Leesa,
the older you get, the more they become a part of you.'

"And
this, we're talking, it was on the eve of 40 years. And every time I hear
one of them say how long it's been, I just tremble. Because I think: 40
years! I'm going to miss him for 40 years. And then some. But for 40 years
and plus, our love grows. Our love doesn't die."

Then
she got up and walked away, down the aisles of gravestones.
The Things Their Families Carried By
NEIL GENZLINGERCourtesy
of The New York TimesPublished:
October 10, 2008

Documentaries
come into being in lots of ways, but not many have begun with a phone call
of condolence made to a graveyard.

Such
was the catalyst for “Section 60,” a somber film on HBO Monday night about
the impromptu community that has evolved in the part of Arlington National
Cemetery in Virginia where the war dead from Iraq and Afghanistan are being
buried. For four months last year the filmmakers, Jon Alpert and Matthew
O’Neill, more or less camped out in Section 60 with their cameras, capturing
the stages and types of mourning of spouses, parents, children and friends
who came there.

“Section
60” filmmakers Matthew O’Neill, left, and Jon Alpert

In
tone, the film is light years away from the men’s acclaimed “Baghdad ER,”
an often gruesome look at an Army Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, which
won four Emmy Awards in 2006. Yet the two films have a direct connection:
Lance Corporal Robert T. Mininger, 21, who
is seen dying of a shrapnel wound in the harrowing final moments of “Baghdad
ER.”

In
completing that film, Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Alpert made contact with Lance
Corporal Mininger’s mother, Paula Zwillinger of Lagrangeville, New York,
as did Sheila Nevins, HBO’s president for documentary films. Friendships
were forged, and Ms. Nevins took to calling Ms. Zwillinger every June 6,
the anniversary of Lance Corporal Mininger’s death in 2005. Last year that
call proved revelatory for Ms. Nevins.

“I
said, ‘How are you doing, Paula?’ and she said, ‘I’m with Robert,’ ” Ms.
Nevins recalled. “I said, ‘Oh,’ thinking she probably was in church. I
said, ‘Are you alone?’ And she said no, so I thought she was with Larry,
her husband. She said, ‘No, I’m with other mothers and widows.’ I thought
it was a support group.”

But
Ms. Zwillinger was in Section 60, visiting her son’s grave, and as she
told Ms. Nevins of the cemetery and the extended family of survivors who
can be found there any given day, Ms. Nevins knew there was a story that
needed documenting.

“She
presented this film to me,” Ms. Nevins said. “It wasn’t a pitch, it was
a description of a place she was at. But I saw it as a film.”

Ms.
Nevins dispatched Mr. Alpert and Mr. O’Neill to Section 60. The resulting
film is full of stark, unadorned vignettes of the people who come there
to visit the graves of loved ones. There are no traditional documentary-style
interviews; just a camera bearing witness as parents, widows and children
talk to gravestones, or to themselves, or to one another.

“We
were there for four months, almost every day,” Mr. O’Neill said. “Basically
living in the cemetery, embedded with the workers, with the families, with
the mourners.”

This
is not the antiseptic postcard Arlington. The film captures loved ones
leaving flowers, children’s drawings, photographs; if a graveyard can be
alive, this part of Arlington is, in marked contrast to other sections.

“It’s
green and white, green and white, green and white,” Mr. O’Neill said, “and
then there’s this multicolored wound where Section 60 is, popping out of
the landscape, where there are bright flowers, and mementos. It’s colorful
in a way that, ‘We’re just trying to will everybody back to life.’ ”

The
filmmaking was, of course, decidedly different than it was in that emergency
room in Iraq.

“In
‘Baghdad ER’ the job is to get them in the hospital, get them out of the
hospital as fast as they can, because that’s how they save their lives,”
said Mr. Alpert, 59. “But here the motion has come to a stop. But the emotions
haven’t come to a stop. The emotions never, never come to an end.”

And
that, the filmmakers said, made the new documentary in some ways more wrenching
to make.

“I
never cried while holding the camera in ‘Baghdad ER,’ ” said Mr. O’Neill,
30, who met Mr. Alpert through his daughter, a friend in college. “I was
always focused on the moment and how things were moving. More times than
I can count in ‘Section 60,’ as someone’s crying and sharing and talking,
I’m dripping tears on the lens.”

Much
has been made about the restrictions on photographing the coffins returning
home in these wars, but “Section 60” has the full range of images: graves
being dug, coffins, funerals, honor guards, weeping relatives.

The
cemetery — though it has had its controversies regarding access — permits
some degree of media coverage of funerals there with family permission,
said John C. Metzler Jr., Arlington’s Superintendent. But whereas most
news outlets come just to grab a quick story, he said, Mr. O’Neill and
Mr. Alpert impressed him with their diligence, and with the respect they
showed.

“They
were attending my morning meetings; they were in the cemetery for several
months,” he said. “And they came in suits. They didn’t come in jeans with
cigarettes hanging out of their mouths and putting their coffee cups on
headstones.”

The
suits helped, the filmmakers acknowledged, but so did tact and patience.

“Oftentimes
you would see a family go up to the grave and they would just launch themselves
onto the tombstone and start crying,” Mr. Alpert said. “Our instinct as
reporters was ‘We have to film that.’ And we didn’t. We would stand there,
and then we would go over without the cameras running, and we would talk
to people. And we would explain who we were, why we were there, and ask
if it would be possible for them to share with us.”

Ms.
Zwillinger, who receives a consultant credit on the film, had a simple
explanation for why so many agreed to that sharing. “By talking to someone
about your child, it keeps the memory alive,” she said. “To us, they’re
not gone.”

Paula
Zwillinger, center, whose son is buried at Arlington National Cemetery,
spoke with Sheila Nevins, right, of HBO at a screening of the film on Monday
in New York

Jessica
Gray, a young widow who is seen at the opening of the film bringing her
infant daughter, Ava, to the grave of the father she met only once, Staff
Sergeant Yance T. Gray, described what went through
her mind when the filmmakers approached her: “I remember thinking, ‘If
I can help anyone else understand that you can make it through this ...’
”

Jessica
Gray, with her infant daughter, Ava, at Arlington National Cemetery in
Virginia to visit the grave of her husband, Staff Sergeant Yance T. Gray

Last
Monday at an HBO screening room in Manhattan, many of those in the film
saw it for the first time. There was laughter as Rick Miller shares a beer
with his brother-in-law, Specialist Christopher
T. Neiberger, by pouring it onto his grave, and again when Greg Medina
takes a nap on the grave of his son, Lance Corporal Brian
A. Medina. There were a few tears as well, but this audience had already
done most of its crying.

Though
the film is being broadcast in the heat of an election, the filmmakers
say they don’t consider it a political work but a film about the soldiers
and the holes left in the lives of those who loved them. Mr. Alpert, though,
does see a political application.

“I
personally feel compelled to try and do whatever I can do to make the American
public think about what it means to go to war,” he said. “I’m not telling
them who to vote for, but they have to think about it. They have to always
know that there’s a war going on, and that as they enter the voting booths
there are people who are crying in Section 60.”
SECTION 60By
Tony PerryCourtesy
of The Los Angeles TimesOctober
13, 2008

In
"Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery," the stepfather of a U.S. soldier
killed in Afghanistan remembers the moments just before his wife got the
dreadful notification.

She
had heard on the news that 16 troops had been killed and, her husband says,
she knew "that meant there will be 16 mothers who will be crying tonight.
She didn't know she would be one of them."

There
is a lot of crying in "Section 60," an intimate and achingly personal look
at that section of the famed cemetery where U.S. troops killed in Iraq
and Afghanistan are buried.

The
government guards the privacy of families with loved ones buried at Arlington,
and news coverage at the cemetery is limited. But filmmakers Jon Alpert
and Matthew O'Neill were granted seemingly unlimited access both to the
site and the grieving families.

The
result is a powerful documentary about service and sacrifice and the American
families that bear both with dignity and strength. There is no narrator,
no script; the emotions are raw and unrehearsed.

"He
was my whole world," says the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. "I know
he's in a better place. They can't shoot at him now."

A
wife talks of her husband's death: "Our love didn't die." Says another
widow, "Next week would have been our 20th wedding anniversary. It's just
tough all around."

A
soldier meets the family of a buddy killed in combat and tries to comfort
them. "Every single time I dream he's there," he says. A mother says of
her dead son, "I would take his place in a heartbeat."

Families
grieve in similar yet individual ways. Some mothers bring their children
to show them Daddy's grave. One widow moved close to Arlington, Virginia,
to make the trips easier. Families come on holidays and anniversaries;
they bond with others who have suffered the same loss. They pray and weep.
They bring flowers and sometimes food. They talk to the headstones.

Without
trying, "Section 60" proves anew that the battlefield may be the only truly
integrated American workplace. The families are white, black, Latino, Asian;
a couple who emigrated from Pakistan 25 years ago to enjoy the freedom
of America earlier mourn their son and pray.

This
is the third in a trilogy of Iraq-related documentaries by Alpert and O'Neill
for HBO. The first was "Baghdad ER," about the frantic pace of a military
hospital, the second was "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq," about soldiers,
Marines and sailors who survived their wounds and felt reborn.

"Section
60" is a perfect coda to the earlier efforts. Like the others, it is resolutely
nonpolitical, neither condemning nor supporting American foreign policy,
merely showing the cost of war and the people who pay it.

The
closest any of the family members comes to a political statement is the
widow of an Army staff sergeant who admits to being upset by people who
feel the Iraq war was a mistake: "It's hard to hear things they say when
you feel your husband died for his country."

The
sister of a fallen soldier says that Section 60 has been called "the saddest
acre in America."

She
adds her own view: "I would say, too, it is one of the most honorable places
in America."

The
filmmakers have done the cemetery and the families forever linked to it
proud.
INTERVIEW WITH JON ALPERT
AND MATTHEW O'NEILL

HBO:
Your previous film, 'Baghdad ER,' was a gut-wrenching look at the human
cost of the Iraq war as seen through doctors and soldiers who served there.
'Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery' brings the war experience back
home. What inspired you to make the film?

Jon
Alpert: I think we have to credit (HBO's) Sheila Nevins who was haunted
by her personal contacts with people from the films we've made. In this
case it was Paula Zwillinger, the mother of the Marine who dies at the
end of Baghdad ER. Her son is buried in Arlington Cemetery. And Sheila
called Paula who was at Arlington Cemetery on the second anniversary of
her son Bobby's death and found Paula in Section 60. And Sheila could feel
the emotion. And the next thing Matt and I knew we were standing in Arlington
Cemetery with Paula. And the same type of deep, haunting emotion that we
tried to capture is what we felt that day. That's really the genesis of
this film.

Matthew
O'Neill: And it's different from 'Baghdad ER,' because all the action and
visceral pain that you feel when you are thrust into 'Baghdad ER' is uniquely
different than the overwhelming sense of loss, love, and yearning in Section
60. It's a totally different emotional place. And yet both relate directly
to war.

Jon
Alpert: And as reporters and citizens, we look for ways in which we can
communicate something about war - and very specifically about the wars
that we are involved in right now. There isn't a lot of war coverage anymore
on TV or even in the general conversation right now. It's been wiped out
by the sort of war on Wall Street. But people are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And we're trying to help people understand that.

Matthew
O'Neill: It's important to remember that there are many, many families
out there that continue to confront the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as
a concrete reality that they are dealing with on a daily basis. And you
see it in Arlington Cemetery, and you see it at military bases across the
country. These families are largely invisible to most Americans.

HBO:
The film doesn't take a position on the war, or have an agenda. Was that
a conscious choice?

Matthew
O'Neill: Actually, I think we do have an agenda, because we've had an agenda
with all of our films, which is to bring awareness and to raise people's
consciousness about what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and what's
happening here at home as it relates to the wars. You know, you never see
the faces of the fallen in the film because we're paying attention to the
faces of everyone who is left behind. And whether you fall on the "right"
side of the war or the "left" side of the war, or someplace in between,
everyone needs to understand in concrete terms what war means, its ramifications,
and how it affects Americans and American families.

HBO:
What did you learn from them? And how did the making of the film evolve
as you began capturing their stories?

Matthew
O'Neill: Well, we really became part of the cemetery. We got there first
thing in the morning when the groundskeepers were arriving, and we left
as they were locking the gates, almost every day for four months. We became
part of the community and were accepted by the community. We never pushed
in with our cameras when we weren't wanted. But when appropriate, we did
become part of those intimate, sacred moments. You know, there has never
been anything like Section 60 at Arlington before, where the people who
are recently killed overseas are all being buried in the same place, and
it's created a community of Section 60 families who can lean on each other
and support new people that come into, as they call it, "the club that
no one ever wants to be part of."

HBO:
What can viewers learn from these families, and the film?

Jon
Alpert: I think there's something quite important, which is: if the sacrifice
of these families goes unknown, and if the cost of war goes unknown...that
to some degree we are all dishonoring these families and the soldiers.
Because it's really, really important that the American people think about
who pays the price when we wage war. We shouldn't go to war if we are uneducated
about that cost. We shouldn't let people make decisions for us. And we
should think about the people who sacrificed, and the fact that it could
be your next door neighbor or your son or your daughter someday. But you
shouldn't have your eyes and ears covered.

Matthew
O'Neill: Of course many of these families have political opinions, some
are against the war - and some for the war. But they do not want to put
their kids' service and sacrifice - nor would I - in a political context,
or use it for political gain. All the families at Arlington Cemetery want
the memories of their loved ones preserved, and want their heroism and
sacrifice known to other people. They were all our allies in helping to
tell this story.